How It Was

by Janet Ellis

  ‘I suppose so, somewhere.’ Sarah was almost out of the room.

  I used to like doing her hair then, choosing ribbons, tying them tightly to stay in place over elastic bands. I was never very good at cutting fringes; Sarah’s always ended up skew-whiff. Michael took Eddie to his barber these days, practically scalping him.

  ‘I’m going to win one,’ she’d said. ‘All you have to do is answer some questions and then say why you love cornflakes. P’easy.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ I had said. ‘Where does it say that?’ And Sarah had shown me the carton, pointing at the leaping horse and the starbursts proclaiming ‘Win’ and ‘Com-

  petition’. I had read the small print. ‘It’s just six riding lessons,’ I’d said, watching her deflate with unhappiness. ‘Not the whole horse.’

  Sarah had burst into tears, utterly desolate.

  Were my children having happy childhoods? I wasn’t sure exactly what one looked like, but at least theirs didn’t involve early death or drink. I was as kind to them as I could be. Keeping them fed and clothed was kindness, wasn’t it? They seemed to be getting bigger and learning things without me having to do much about it, except not get in the way of their education and replacing their shoes as their feet grew. When was the last time I’d combed Sarah’s hair?

  ‘I want to learn to ride now,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Do you?’ Michael said. ‘You’ve never said that before. This one practically lived on a horse for a while, didn’t you?’ He smiled at Sarah. She didn’t respond. ‘More expense.’ He rolled his eyes at me. ‘Hey, Sarah, why don’t you try winning us another horse?’

  Sarah scowled, but she looked tearful, too.

  ‘I’m teasing you,’ Michael said, wounded. He looked across at me.

  I ought to say something to support him and appease Sarah. I didn’t speak.

  ‘I don’t want a horse any more,’ Sarah said quietly.

  ‘Sarah could teach me to ride.’ Eddie turned to his sister, looking victorious.

  ‘I’m not a bloody teacher,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t even go riding any more, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ She glared at Eddie.

  ‘Language, thank you,’ said Michael mildly. ‘Maybe you could just pop Eddie on a horse down at the stables, so he can see if he likes it. You still know people there, don’t you?’

  ‘You pop him down there, if you want. I’m not doing it, I haven’t been there in months.’ Sarah left the room without waiting for a reply.

  Eddie put both hands inside the box and waggled it from side to side.

  ‘Careful,’ I said. His turbulent hair seemed to grow from four different crowns, goodness knows how the barber coped. His uniform was scabbed on one sleeve where he habitually wiped his nose. His face shifted from baby to boy even in the seconds that I examined it. I couldn’t see a man there, yet. ‘Careful.’ I took the box from him and bent to kiss the top of his head.

  He ducked and slipped from the chair.

  ‘Come and watch the telly with me, Eddie. Special treat,’ Michael said.

  I stood at the sink and ran the water too hot to put my hands into. I felt as though I were about to sit an exam I hadn’t revised for. Michael hadn’t induced this sort of trepidation in me. We’d met quite by chance, sitting side by side in the theatre. I was on a nurse’s night out: productions that weren’t selling well gave free tickets, on spec, to the nurses’ home to fill out a sparse audience. I grabbed them when I could; it was fun seeing something unexpectedly and I liked dressing up and going out anyway. We’d watched a silly farce and caught each other’s eye a few times as we’d laughed. He’d bought me a drink at the interval and then taken a telephone number before parting. My friend Ginny had knocked on my door a few days later and told me there was a call for me downstairs. ‘Someone called Michael,’ Ginny had said lasciviously, as though his name were synonymous with naughty behaviour. I had stood in the draughty corridor outside the housekeeper’s office and, because the housekeeper doubled as both chaperone and prison guard, I’d tried to keep my answers short and unexciting. We’d arranged to meet for a walk, then went for tea at the Kardomah.

  The next few weeks progressed along similar, chaste lines. I remembered feeling safe. The fact that Michael arrived when he said he would, commented pleasantly on my clothes without indicating he’d like to remove them in haste and delivered me back to the nurses’ home well before my curfew, strengthened me. A port in a storm. If Michael was more of an English fishing village out of season than an exotic continental harbour it didn’t mean I felt any less pleased to be on dry land. The years between us were comfortable, even approved. I had no curiosity about how he’d spent his youth. I imagined there had been other women, perhaps even other promises, but I felt no jealousy. I liked the way he seemed fully-formed, a grown man, by the time we met. He was well-groomed without any vanity and always dressed appropriately for the weather. He had the sort of easy-to-look-at face that you couldn’t quite remember after you’d said goodbye.

  He’d been courteous to my father, when I’d finally persuaded Stan to meet him. ‘I just want to introduce you, that’s all,’ I’d had to yell into the telephone one afternoon. ‘Yes, I do like him, Daddy. It’s already been six months. No, of course I’m not pregnant.’ I could feel the housekeeper’s ears pricking up; my father’s deafness was a great aid to her eavesdropping. Stan had arrived well before the required time for the assignation, which I knew was so that he could settle himself in my one and only armchair and remain there, otherwise he’d have to walk in and reveal how stooped he was, and how frail. He hadn’t been that old then, but what the war had started the alcohol had nearly finished. Michael had understood the situation instantly, persuading him to stay put: ‘This room’s too small for all of us to stand!’ and talking at length about his own prospects, although I felt pretty sure Stan wouldn’t have questioned him about them if he hadn’t. I’d felt so grateful to him. We’d opened some whisky and used tooth mugs to toast each other. I had had to be quite vigilant about the amount my father wanted to pour.

  When Michael proposed, after dinner at the Trocadero, I remembered being more concerned he got it over with than concentrating on what he said. He didn’t go down on one knee, thank God, but the way he’d leaned across the table and proffered the Garrard’s box had all the waiters circling. Did he mention love? Surely he did, he must have done. He’d already asked my father for my hand (which must have happened when I went to the lav, as they hadn’t been left alone apart from then) and then, a few weeks later, I’d met his parents over a Sunday lunch in Orpington. It was a good thing, I thought, pulling on rubber gloves and coaxing stiffened fish and potato from the plates, that I hadn’t tried getting to know them – or indeed Orpington – any better than I did, as they’d both died within a year of each other and not long after the wedding.

  There must have been grief, but I could only remember the practicalities of their deaths. There was a day after his father had died when we went straight from choosing curtain fabric for our new house to selecting a coffin. It was true that Michael had wept when he’d told me his mother had been found dead in the garden, but he was more full of saying how marvellous it was that his parents were together again than empty with his loss. My father had finally given up on life a few years after that. I had a photograph of him holding Sarah, as stiffly as a Victorian grandparent, the baby in a long christening gown. But even his death had been muted, like a sound from another room. I’d felt relieved rather than bereaved. He’d been a constant irritation in his premature old age, like a floating speck in the corner of my eye. We were both only children, Michael and I, and we’d benefitted from neat wills and savings in his parents’ case and a surprising sum of money in my father’s.

  We’d blown some of it on a holiday in France. I remembered walking down a street there. It was after lunch and I’d eaten soft cheese on bread with a hard crust and a dense centre and curled, aromatic meat. I’d been wearing a kind of sundress, so
it must have been quite early in our stay, because I’d got sunburned later and the straps had chafed. I’d felt entirely continental, which was remarkable to me. I’d never encountered foreigners in large numbers before. And that afternoon, in my light dress and with my belly full, I’d imagined I had acquired a sort of Frenchness. Until I caught sight of my reflection in a window, that is, and saw a plodding girl looking overcooked in unforgiving cotton. Even my gait was English. Michael had got food poisoning a few days later. We hadn’t known you shouldn’t open any reluctant mussel shells.

  ‘All done? Well done,’ said Michael, coming into the kitchen just as I dried and stowed the last dish. ‘Thought I’d have some cheese and biscuits. You?’

  I’ve just bloody washed up, I thought, annoyed at the prospect of more crumbs and dirty crockery.

  He shook crackers on to a plate and cut himself a large slice of cheese. He smiled at me, ignoring the shavings of cheese on the work surface. ‘These are a bit soft,’ he said, biting into one as he went.

  I folded over the waxy packet inside the box of biscuits as tightly as it would go.

  France had smelled different. The cigarette smoke, the coffee, the scent of cooking that drifted across the pavements in the late afternoon: you’d never smell anything like that in England. It changed us as we inhaled; we’d even stayed in bed for most of one day.

  We’d left Sarah with Michael’s aunt for the duration of the holiday. I hardly knew the woman, but she’d been so insistent (‘Oh, you don’t want to travel abroad with a baby,’ she’d said) that, despite the fact she hadn’t had any children herself, we’d left our infant daughter in her care for two whole weeks. I’d never have left Eddie like that. I thought of how Sarah had clung to the aunt when Michael and I returned. ‘Now, now,’ the woman had said, disentangling the baby’s little fingers from her cardigan, ‘Mummy’s home.’ She didn’t repeat the offer to care for her again. In fact, she’d got a dog soon afterwards and then claimed that Target or Tricket, or whatever it was called, couldn’t really be trusted with children. We’d gradually stopped seeing her altogether.

  Chapter 42

  The telephone rang. I heard the television’s volume increase as Michael opened the sitting room door and then, just as loudly, Sarah hurtling down the stairs and shouting our number into the receiver. She was still talking when I crossed the hallway, hunched away as I passed her then looked over her shoulder, waiting for me to leave.

  ‘School friend?’ Michael asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What do they talk about?’ he added, as I knew he would.

  ‘You always say that,’ I said.

  ‘Do I?’ said Michael. One wing of his shirt collar protruded over his jumper. He looked crumpled. I should go to him, tidy him, put my arms round him and say nothing. I felt as if I couldn’t reach him.

  ‘They rang us. It’s not going on our bill, is it?’ I said. ‘She’s not doing any harm.’ I watched him react.

  ‘But no one else can get through,’ he said.

  ‘Are you expecting an urgent call?’ I said.

  He looked puzzled and shook his head.

  ‘Exactly. In fact,’ I went on, ‘I can’t remember the last time anyone even rang here for you.’ I could keep this up easily, and for hours.

  ‘All right,’ he said, after a pause.

  ‘You don’t even like talking on the phone,’ I said. ‘That’s probably why you get so worked up about Sarah chatting away. It must be like hearing a language you don’t speak.’

  ‘It might well be, I’ll have to listen more carefully,’ Michael said.

  ‘She’s just young and having fun,’ I said. ‘Do you remember how that feels?’

  ‘All right, Marion,’ he said again. It was always his tactic, this way of calming me down by agreeing with me, not rising to the bait.

  I felt infuriated. I also knew how ludicrous it was to make so much of something so trivial, but it was too late. ‘You always sound so disapproving,’ I said. ‘No wonder Sarah never tells us anything.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Michael had a trace of anger in his voice.

  ‘You still treat her like a little girl. All that teasing about cornflakes and horses. She’s going to be into boys soon. You need to face it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m avoiding anything, Marion,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You are,’ I said. ‘You never notice when she rolls her eyes at you, you look embarrassed when she’s dressed up to go out. It was always going to be awkward for you when she started growing up, but you’re going to have to admit she’s not a child now.’ It was like plucking a chicken: the more the feathers came away in my hand, the more I wanted to see of his pale, vulnerable skin underneath. Fight back, I pleaded silently. Save yourself. Save me, too. His expression was that of a parent who waits for a fractious toddler to exhaust itself. I felt as if I had been batting and swiping uselessly at a fly that buzzed, infuriatingly, just out of reach. Now I opened my hand to discover that I’d caught it with no effort at all.

  We sat in silence until closedown. Michael got up and pushed the television’s switch. We both watched the white dot disappear from the screen. He was coldly polite as we prepared for bed, filling a glass with water and setting it on my bedside table and wishing me goodnight before he turned off his light. He lay straight and stiff, as if there were a channel of deep water between us that he’d fall into if he shifted even a little. I felt buoyed up on a tide of my own irritation. I couldn’t sleep. Michael was already snoring. I got up and tiptoed to the bathroom. Eddie’s door was open; he had a nightlight, but he also liked a spill of light from the landing. I could hear the whistle of his outgoing breaths. I peered in at him. A floorboard creaked beneath me and he stirred, flinging one arm out across the blanket. I stood still, in case he’d heard me and woke, but he was as deeply asleep as if he were drowned and didn’t move again.

  I waited until the bathroom door was closed before I felt for the dangling string above the basin. The light was grey and spare. My face in the mirror was out of focus. The

  shadows made my mouth appear hollow and toothless. I gathered the brushed nylon of my nightdress and held it tight against my waist, outlining my breasts and hips in a parody of a screen siren’s dress. I heard the click of a door opening nearby. I hesitated, alert and cautious. I switched off the light and felt for the door handle. Sarah stood on the landing; she looked surprised to see me.

  ‘Night,’ I whispered.

  Sarah pointed towards Eddie’s room. She held her finger to her lips in an exaggerated instruction to be silent.

  ‘I know,’ I hissed. I crept back into bed, where Michael maintained his board-like position, even in sleep. I heard the lavatory’s flush, then Sarah’s quick footsteps as she rushed back to her room. She’d want to be back under her covers before the cistern’s final filling clunk. I knew it was one of her good luck charms.

  Michael was still aggrieved the next morning. I countered with my own detachment. I saw Sarah hesitate in the doorway of the kitchen, registering the skirmish. I used to wait like that, to see if my father had already been drinking by this time in the morning. I’d watch for the tremor in his hands and if he held his cup steadily then I’d know he’d started. If he shook, trying to disguise it with careful and deliberate gestures, then he was sober. But we both knew that all he’d be wanting to do, all he’d really be thinking about, would be having a drink.

  Michael and I hardly spoke to each other but Eddie chattered, oblivious. He was like a fully-wound clockwork toy that kept moving forward, despite any obstacles in its way. Michael got up and stood behind him, squeezing his little shoulders and bending almost near enough to him to kiss him on the top of his head, if he’d wanted to. ‘Have a good day at school,’ he said and let go. Eddie hunched his freed shoulders to his ears then pushed both his hands through his hair, leaving it upright.

  Michael had nearly left the house when I hurried after him. ‘Could I ha
ve some extra money, please?’ I said. ‘I thought I might go shopping today.’

  Michael felt in his trouser pocket for his wallet. Taking out several pound notes, he counted them first to himself then into my hand. ‘Enough?’ he said, replacing the wallet without waiting for an answer. I blushed. He must have intended it to feel like a transaction. His thick, neat hair was combed and creamed into obedience as usual and his short, practical coat was his armour against the day.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. His hand was on the door handle and he wasn’t looking at me. ‘Michael, I’m sorry. I was a pig.’

  He turned round and I saw relief flood through him and soften his features. ‘It’s all right, Moo,’ he said. There was a pause. ‘You were probably just tired. Was Bridget good company yesterday? Did she have much to say?’

  Bridget’s round and glistening face bobbed in the corner of my memory like a happy balloon. ‘The usual. Not much. There are some more puppies.’

  ‘Oh, the puppies. Never agree to having one.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ve my hands full with you lot. I’ll see you later,’ I said, brushing at the shoulders of his coat.

  When I was finally left alone, it was as if I’d been holding my breath till then, my ears bursting with effort and my lungs aching. I had a superstitious hunch that I had to earn any pleasure to come by doing what needed to be done first, but I was tempted to leave everything as it was, the plates unwashed and the milk bottle out of the fridge, like a domestic Mary Celeste.

  Chapter 43

  2 October

  For once, I had a real reason – more than choir practice or being in the same lunch queue – to talk to Bobbie properly. It made me feel nervous and excited at the same time. Sometimes when I think of her, she’s like the Jesus figure on my box, holding her arms out to me with streams of light behind her head. It was her hair I noticed first: it goes right down her back in thick, shining waves. When I was little, I often used to sleep with my hair wetted and rolled up in strips of cloth so that it would be curled by the next day. The rags circled my head in big lumps. They hurt whenever I turned over in bed. Mum told me that everyone suffers to look beautiful, but my curls only ever lasted till lunchtime.